Shadow Tyrants (Oregon Files 13)

Petkunas shook his head. “That’s something I never want to do again. I see a lot of paperwork in our future.”

“Cheer up,” Larsson said with a grin. “At least I’m on the beach.”

Petkunas chuckled. “The fire truck better get here with your sunscreen fast.”

“Yeah, where are those guys?”

Now Petkunas realized that he didn’t hear any sirens of approaching emergency units. But he did see people running toward them.

The first to reach them was one of the ground workers.

“You guys all right?” he huffed without taking his eyes off the destroyed plane.

“We’re fine,” Petkunas said. “Don’t they have fire trucks here?”

“None of them are working right now,” the ground worker said.

“What?” Larsson said, perplexed.

“Then it wasn’t just us?” Petkunas asked.

The Diego Garcia worker shook his head. “All electronic systems went out a few minutes ago while you were in the air. Everything on the island is dead.”

NINE

THE INDIAN OCEAN

“What do you mean, there’s no one there?” Max asked Hali. “That island has over three thousand people stationed on it.”

Max now sat in the op center’s command chair, with Linda Ross at the radar station. Eric Stone had come over from the Triton Star to help Murph localize the source of the mysterious internet communication, and they were huddled over a terminal examining a stream of data.

Hali looked completely baffled. “I was talking to Diego Garcia about the USS Gridley’s estimated arrival time, and the satellite connection suddenly went dead.”

“Maybe something happened to the satellite uplink,” Linda said.

Hali shook his head in frustration. “I’ve tried radio, telephone, and satellite. Nothing. I also checked with the military and the CIA. It’s not just us. Nobody has been able to get in touch with them. It’s like the island just isn’t there.”

“Something could have knocked out the island’s electrical plant,” Eric said.

“A power failure might explain why we couldn’t get in touch with the island,” Hali replied, “but it wouldn’t explain why no one can contact any of the ships based there, including the Gridley, which supposedly was just setting sail. How could they all go out?”

“Maybe it was a mega-tsunami,” Murph said without looking up from his computer.

Despite the mocking tone of his voice, Hali answered Murph’s speculation seriously. “No, I already checked. The tsunami warning center hasn’t detected any major earthquakes in the last hour.”

Eric smirked at Murph. He had recommended the weapons designer for the Oregon post after they worked together on a top secret missile project, and although they were opposites in many ways, they had since become like brothers, with all the banter, competition, and squabbling that entailed.

“Are you kidding?” Eric scoffed jokingly. “A tsunami is way too mundane. How about a meteor strike?”

“Or a wormhole?” Murph countered.

“Alien abduction?”

“Sharknado?”

“It doesn’t matter why,” Max said, both amused and exasperated by the two young crew members. “Hali, keep trying. I don’t like coincidences. Especially when strange messages are telling someone to kill everybody. Eric, have you been able to triangulate where the messages are coming from?”

“Somewhere near the stern of the Triton Star. Can’t be more precise than that.”